


Candlelight

by aureliu_s



Category: Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Breaking Celibacy Vows, Caring Sebastian, F/M, Hawke Twins, Inquisitor Before Inquisition, Kissing, Mutual Pining, Oaths & Vows, Pining, Pre-Dragon Age II - Act 3, Pre-Dragon Age: Inquisition, Sebastian Vael in the Chantry, The Chantry (Dragon Age), finally they smooch, though not too pre
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:35:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23419852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aureliu_s/pseuds/aureliu_s
Summary: All Soul's Day in the Chantry is a bustling holiday, but Sebastian prefers the Chantry dark and empty.Well, not entirely empty.
Relationships: Female Inquisitor/Sebastian Vael, Female Trevelyan/Sebastian Vael
Kudos: 5





	Candlelight

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by BEAUTIFUL artwork by levikra!!! go check out their amazing tumblr (follow the link in the first line to see it!) and all their amazing art. thank you so much for the inspiration my friend!

[ _The choice to swear my vows was my own, conscious and confident._ ](https://levikra.tumblr.com/post/613970543432155136/do-you-regret-taking-a-vow-of-celibacy-phew-a)

All Soul’s Day. The Chantry had been bursting with prayers from sunup, the early risers who did not have the freedom to wander in at noon like the elite did; those with jobs who occupied their hands all day so they could never be clasped be in prayer while the sun shone on them. The sun demanded their work. But they were still determined to make room for their lives for the Chantry and Andraste and for the sisters to bless and protect them. Sebastian held the candles and the ceremonial wine and as the day wore on wished for the ache behind his knees to vanish by magic or prayer. The Chantry robes were comfortable enough but he was beginning to dislike the way the gazes turned on him. Hawke looked at him differently. Fenris looked at him differently. Anders looked at him differently. But the citizens of Kirkwall looked at him like he was a living god, a living confession. A tower of faith. Obelisk of promise.

_But the Chantry didn’t demand of me to be celibate._

Now night had fallen and the Chantry had closed its doors. Those who had not been able to scramble through its doors during the day or during the noon lull could find one of the wandering sisters on the streets who would offer quick, rehearsed and lifeless blessings for the right price. Now Kirkwall had taken to celebrating, with religion out of its way. They had taken to the theatres for the plays, both historical and satirical, the taverns for discounted drinks. The brothels were unfortunately closed, not that Sebastian would visit them unless he was in armor, a bow in his hand and Hawke three steps ahead. No, he had his own temptation, and his own temptress.

_In youth, I didn’t know the real warmth given by people._ _The family paid little to no attention to a growing, youngest son._

The sisters had gone to sleep after a tiring day and Elthina had retired as well. The brothers, what few of them there were, had eaten altogether in their usual silence and wanting, and had gone to bed. That left Sebastian the only one to hear the great Chantry doors creak and groan into the dark foyer, shut gently behind the new arrival. He waits for a moment, listening to the soft click of heeled shoes, someone walking on their toes to preserve the silence. The inaudible rustle of cloth reaches his ears, and then from around the corner, presumably following the little glow of the altar candles he has lit, a woman appears.

“I’m sorry,” he says, turning in the darkness, “the Chantry is no longer offering blessings for All Soul’s Day.” The woman steps closer. Her dress is deep crimson, thin velvet with a wispy white skirt beneath two slits at her knees. The neckline drops around her shoulders and hints her chest but is high enough to keep it secret, with flared sleeves at the sides. Her skin is tanned by the sun, her nails smooth and glittering with a manicure.  
“The Chantry sounds more like a business than a church,” she says, the grin on her lips soaking into her words. Sebastian pauses. Meets her eyes. Hard to tell in the candlelight, but they are lavender, her face lovely and full, her cheeks high but not sunken. 

_Love, acceptance, freedom—the things I sought behind all the wrong doors._

“Besides. I didn’t come for a blessing.” She puts her hands in her skirts and lifts them a fraction of an inch to walk closer to him, now an arm’s length away. There is no mistaking it.  
“Azriel,” he says warmly, calmly, but his heart is hammering and his blood is fire. How long, how long had it been since she’d come to Kirkwall? Since before the Qunari. And now she is here under tangible rumors of a rebellion. Always she comes to him when the outside world is in peril, like Andraste is supposed to. He takes her in appreciatively but respectfully, eyes glazing over her dress, the simple necklace, the glittering in her eyes. Her lips are a sweet shade of understated red, like, like...the watery ceremonial wine he’s been holding all day. But Maker, he can’t even think of the Chantry when she is standing here. Her lips—their color don’t matter. Her lips—he wants to kiss them. “I didn’t know you were in Kirkwall.”  
“My father sent me here for the holiday to wine and dine a business partner.”  
“He didn’t come himself?”  
“No,” she gave a little shrug, “he’s not feeling well. And frankly, he doesn’t like the man.”

Sebastian nods his understanding with a little smile. “It sounds as if he’s grooming you.”  
“For the business? Oh no,” she laughs again, “that’s Laela’s lot. I’m just...” _doing anything to keep me out of this place_ , he hears her unsaid words. The Trevelyan family has always committed someone to the Chantry, much like his. She has avoided the pressure thus far. Some part of him is fearful of her finally falling victim to it. When he tries to imagine it, all he can see is the Rite of Tranquility. “I’m just doing whatever I can. Looking into mercenary work, or joining the city guard.”

He thinks of Aveline. Azriel is not Aveline; she was not born to be a city guard like Aveline was. When Sebastian looks away he notices how the light catches on her dress and her chest and likes the way the curve of her breasts catch the burnished gold light. He likes this dress, he decides, just as he has liked all her others.

_And I relished a lot of things that I would recall with great shame these days._

“Mercenary work,” he nods, “I’m surprised your mother doesn’t have anything to say about that.” They laugh together and he feels surprisingly at ease. Every time she appears in Kirkwall after months, years of absence, they slip back into conversation as if they had never stopped talking. Their words from before the Qunari invasion are picked right up, dusted off, and slung back into speech with the same ease as him notching an arrow.  
“She does. She hates it. She thinks there’s no room for respect in the mercenary world, like they’re all bloodthirsty marauders. It’s synonymous with _outlaw_ in her mind, really.” Azriel talking to him is not the same thing as Azriel talking to her peers, other nobles, or even her parents, and he is glad he notices it. 

Sebastian squints down at the candle he cups between his palms, the flickering candle in its glass cup, and then twists around to set it back on the altar. Immediately he wishes he hadn’t because now his arms are empty and his hands achingly unoccupied. Under the watchful gaze of brass Andraste, he cannot fill them with her.

_But I couldn’t leave my past behind as not important._

Azriel senses his distress. She looks at him and the awkward way he holds his hands in front of him—it is too mature, too elderly for the vibrant young man in front of her—and steps forward. Her dress whispers. Slowly, with mutual understanding, their arms extend to one another and they embrace, but don’t let go. Sebastian’s whole body aches and cries for this; even a hug he can’t find if he overturned every stone in the walls of the Chantry or every tile on the floors. She rubs his back without hesitation and he can’t help but sigh into her neck, relishing in the fact that her shoulder is bare when he rests his cheek on it. How can she always know what he needs? Her skin is warm and soft like the Ostwick sun, and she smells of a long lost ocean with gleaming azure waves that start loud and thunderous in the water only to bubble gently to the shore. His hands cramp to hold her. Fingers splay gently against her back. He is shamefully aware of how starved he is. Shamefully aware.

  
“How are the others treating you?” She murmurs against his cheek, swaying a little on her feet. He puts the length of his arms around her, brass Andraste be damned, altar be damned, invisible Maker be damned. He wants to feel again.  
“Well enough,” Sebastian hums back. “Varric and Anders will never like me, I’ve understood that for a time. Garrett is not very accomodating, but Maia is kind enough.” As he speaks she slides her elegant fingers into his hair to rub his scalp. “The others don’t feel too strongly one way or the other.”  
“What about the elf?” Her voice sounds a little strained.  
“Fenris?” He feels himself smile. “Well, I’d call him a friend. A very dear one, perhaps.”

_I wanted to prove my loyalty to the life that Elthina, the Chantry granted me._

When she sniffles he feels guilty. She hasn’t cried in front of him in recent memory, though he knows she would like to. She is strong, fearless, feminine, eloquent, and he hates to say that he is the reason she is crying. She doesn’t cry often. But she is now.  
“What’s the matter?” Sebastian asks delicately, leaning back to cup her cheeks in his hands.  
“Nothing,” she breathes a lie, “I missed you. It’s good to see you again.” The tears streak clean and bold from her lavender eyes and he frowns at them. “Though I suppose it’s no different from when you were in Starkhaven.” _I suppose it is entirely likely I will never be able to love you like I want to_. Without a second thought, he leans forward to kiss away her tears, lips brushing her cheek, her eyelids, her nose. She makes a startled noise and is ready to remind him of his vows—just like last time, the time before that, the time before that, the first time—but he kisses her lips before she can.

Her lips taste of sweet summer wine. Soft and soothing against his own, he kisses her tenderly, willing her not to cry. When it breaks there is a moment of breath between them. Then, like one reaches out for a relic, with all the caution in the world, she cranes towards his mouth and asks politely for another. He gives it to her; another and a million more. A million more to make up for the past years of solitude and silence. A million more to remind her that yes, he still loves her. A million more, and a million more. 

He kisses her and cradles the back of her head in one hand, careful not to disturb her intricate hairdo, pressing on her back with his other hand and pushing her closer closer closer until her chest rises into his to breathe. He kisses her in the dim and dying and dusky candlelight, gingerly sliding his tongue into the warmth of her mouth and hearing the sigh that leaves her lips and breaks like a wave on his chin. He kisses her like Elthina doesn’t exist. He kisses her, and she kisses him.

_The vow is a reminder I made mistakes, but I am here to atone for them._

When he pulls back, just a fraction of an inch, he looks first at her beautifully rose-soft lips and then at the gleaming statue of Andraste, proud and strong and bearing her lance. He thinks of Her and then only of her again, and how much he misses the body he never got to have, and how much he misses her lips because they only come to him once or twice every year or so and oh too often in his dreams and painfully frequent in his prayers. He looks back to the lips he has betrayed because he believes in a Maker who has made nothing for him except the woman in front of him and even then, he cannot worship and give freely at the temple of her flesh because he is bound, head to toe, to the brass lance-wielding bride. The Maker has made nothing for him except one thing, and through his devotion to that same Maker, he cannot have it.

Azriel watches him look to Andraste but doesn’t know what he’s thinking. He’s allowed her kisses before, soft and private and sometimes hesitant (not because he rethinks his love for her, but because he rethinks his devotion to Her), but never in the Chantry. She sees him look to brass lance-wielding Andraste and shies back a step or two, hating how insignificant this damned building makes her feel. A warrior and a chevalier and she cannot best an oversized and crude figurine of an expressionless and geometric woman.

_And maybe now the ghosts of the past are proud of me._  
  
“Thank you for your patience, kitten,” he whispers and gently pulls her back to him, closer, and for a moment he is old Sebastian, but not the one who was lost and slept around and drank the coffers away and rolled his eyes at his parents and cried by himself when they beat him, but old Sebastian who looked forward to the winter ball for her lavender eyes; old Sebastian who danced the soles of his boots away on the polished marble floors with her; old Sebastian who was up at all hours to explore Starkhaven and the surrounding hills. Old Sebastian who had found love for only a week during the winter and a month or so during the summer, and who clung to it in the perfumed letters that came from the coast. Old Sebastian who had found love and called her _kitten_ and kissed her frequently, not just in his dreams.

“Patience?” She echoes. Her voice tinged with hope. _Thank you for your patience._ Patience means there is something coming. An end to her waiting; her patience is rewarded. She tries not to sound too invested.  
“Yes,” he touches her cheek. He is no longer the meek, obeying Chantry brother in this moment. “Thank you for your everything.”

_And maybe now, the vision of my future is clearer than before._


End file.
